Finally Finished the Louvre!

Luckily for my readers, Abbey has been bugging me rather incessantly to update my blog since sometime Saturday. Since I really enjoy any excuse to not write my essay for my literature class, I’m going to do it now to appease her.

Thursday after classes Abbey, Nick and I headed over to Centre Georges Pomidou, a really cool modern building near the center of Paris. From the top floor you get a pretty good view of most of Paris’ major monuments and the building itself houses a very popular public library and Paris’ modern art museum – we went to the museum. The three of us got in free since we have student ID cards that say we’re art history students (thanks to our architecture calss!) so that was nice, because I don’t think I enjoy modern art enough to pay 9 euros to see it… We did, what at least I felt was, a very thorough examination of both floors of modern art. We even attempted to examine and discuss and attempt to understand a couple of pieces at the beginning, but really solid color canvases only say so much to me. It took us about 2.5 hours to cover the two floors of art and by the time we finished my legs were killing me it was already dark so I couldn’t take pictures of the back of the building (the coolest part!) so I will hopefully have a chance to go back and take those this coming weekend sometime.

Friday I stayed home in the morning, relaxed and did a little bit of homework. Abbey came over around 3 after going to La Defense and we headed over to the movie theater together to use our free tickets we got for being class delegates earlier in the semester. We decided on watching The Dutchess since it seemed interesting and fit our time slot the best. We had a little bit of time before the movie, so we meandered around the nearby Christmas market (they are everywhere in Paris!) and got soft serve ice cream from my favorite place in the shopping center. I enjoyed the movie, although it wasn’t as light-hearted as I had been hoping (I hadn’t read a synopsis or seen a preview). It was kind of strange sitting in a movie theater watching an American film, I felt like I could have been back in Albuquerque until I walked back out of the cinema and saw the Christmas market in the plaza.

Saturday morning I headed to the Louvre and was able to do the entire 3rd floor, so I have now officially seen everything I could see in the Louvre (there are 2 or so exhibitions that are currently closed). I saw lots of 15th-18th century paintings from France and also Flanders and Italy. I got to see a couple more paintings that I had studied in my art history class last year, which was cool. It always interesting to see a painting after you study it, because often I have no idea how big it is when I look at the picture in the book and just imagine it as being a certain size. A lot of times they are a lot bigger or smaller than the way I thought of them. I also got to see a couple of the very famous La Tour paintings. They weren’t displayed at all how I imagined they would be. The paintings are so dark and what makes them fascinating is the way the light from the flame illuminates the images and reflects like a real flame would. I would think that these would then be displayed in a room with a complimenting ambience, not extremely dark, but something with a somber, heavier feel and coloring to help emphasis the light within the painting. But, no! The paintings were in one of the lightest, airiest, most modern room of the Louvre I’ve seen! I felt so distracted by all the sunlight and white that I didn’t feel like I could really appreciate the paintings, just another thing to add to the list of things I dislike about the Louvre. Anyway, I’ve now finished with it, and don’t have to go back, at least until I’m here again.

Sunday I decided to do part of one of my walking tours that took me through Parc Monceau (a very pretty park in a ritzy area of town) before meeting up with Abbey at the Musée Jacquemart-André. I couldn’t believe just how dead Paris is Sunday morning at 10am. There was no one and I mean no one around except the joggers in the park (and there were plenty of them, you would have thought it was a marathon!). I walked through the park, narrowly escaping being stampeded on several occasions, and also looked at some of Parisian style mansions that border it. I left on the opposite side I entered from, and headed down a couple of deserted streets to meet Abbey. The museum is a Hôtel Particulier, an old mansion of a rich couple from the 19th century. They had a beautiful house and a rather impressionable art collection (including enough Italian artifacts to display assembled together as an “Italian Museum”). Abbey and I both especially admired the double spiral staircase that took you from the winter garden (read: indoors, with lots of marble) to the Italian fresco. I would have loved to eaten lunch at the restaurant there, apparently very popular with the older female population according to our French prof., but I didn’t feel like plunking down 26 euros for brunch!

After the museum Abbey and I checked out the pagoda listed in my walking tour (who doesn’t want to feel like they’re in Asia in the middle of Paris?) and then the Russian Orthodox Church (unfortunately it was Sunday and I felt too awkward to take pictures of it while congregants were standing outside chit-chatting). We then headed to metro and went out separate ways.

This week is the last week of classes for me. I have finals Monday through Wednesday of next week and head home Thursday. After I get my last couple of assignments done, I’m going to divide my time between studying for finals and sightseeing. I’ll try to update when I feel like procrastinating.

Pictures to come soon!!

Random Tidbits

French police don’t drive around one or two in a car, like in the U.S. In Paris you always see police in groups of three, sometimes four and sometimes they are plain-clothes officers, making the sight even weirder. It is a very strange and for some reason, somewhat unsettling, sight for me when I see three policemen standing around one single car that they’ve pulled over for a traffic infraction (though this in and of itself is rather rare in Paris where traffic laws are much more suggestions than their name implies). They make the driver get out of the car and one stands with him or her while another stands near the front of the car pacing and looking very inquisitive, like they are trying to find something else that is wrong and the other stands at the back of the car, inspects the license plate and who knows what else. This is an even stranger sight when it’s three plain-clothes policemen stopping a motorcyclist – it looks more like a mafia operation (or at least some sort of organized crime) than a traffic stop.

Tonight for dinner my host mom made salmon and then what I decided was the French version of macaroni and cheese. Here it is known as “pâtes gratin” or pasta gratin (like the potatoes). It’s basically pasta (in my case spirally pasta) mixed with crème fraîche and gruyere cheese and bread crumbs on top all in a casserole dish, baked in the oven. It’s was rather simple but tasty, although I am still looking forward to some good old American style macaroni and cheese when I get home (what would the French say about velveta cheese, or worse: powder cheese?!?!).

An amusing anecdote: the other night my host mom got a phone call during dinner (this is actually a fairly common occurrence, she is quite popular on the phone). Anyway she excuses herself to go answer it and I continue eating at the table. She’s chatting with whoever is on the other line for a little bit and then I hear her ask if she can call them back later because she is currently eating with “her little American.” Hahaha, I was quite amused…

Almost Cultured...

My eclectic weekend of French culture and Americana in review.

Thursday night IES put together a Thanksgiving meal for the students. It was in a room labeled the “crypt” of a church, which all of the American students found very amusing. We started off with hors d’oeuvres like bread sticks and pigs in a blanket with hot cider and soda to drink (the hot cider was made from French cidre – which is alcoholic and carbonated – so it was rather odd, but nonetheless recognizable as cider). Dinner was set-up as a buffet, an idea that is incomprehensible for most French people, but these caters seemed to get the idea pretty well. We had a green salad, turkey (only white meat, which was AMAZING!!), stuffing, a little bit of gravy, cranberry sauce, green beans, mashed sweet potatoes and creamed corn. The lack of extra gravy was slightly disheartening, the stuffing was an interesting mixture of couscous and bread, and the sweet potatoes had what we decided must be crème fraîche in them, which gave them an odd creamy/ sour taste. For dessert we had brownies and pumpkin pie, which were both good, and the brownies were especially appreciated because they’re not something you see often in France. The meal overall was decent, although we were all still missing our families’ meals, but it was a good attempt at recreating Thanksgiving for all of us American students and I think we all appreciated the idea if not the actual food.

Friday was a whirlwind day of sight seeing. First, I had an Architecture walking tour in the morning. We met under the Eiffel Tower and it was freezing cold!! Of course this was the one day I was in a hurry when leaving the apartment and I forgot my scarf… So we walked around the neighborhood around the Eiffel Tower and looked at a couple of really cool Art Deco/ early 1900’s building and then crossed the Seine to look at some more down past the Trocadero into the 16th arrondisement. I found at least another 2 places where I want buy an apartment in Paris! Most of the buildings were pretty cool to look at, but I don’t think I really learned any more about the architecture style, maybe that’s because I was talking with Abbey and Nick too much, hmmm.

After the walking tour Abbey, Nick, a couple of other girls from the class and I all went to get lunch from the falafel place in the Marais that we love oh so much! After that Nick and some of the other girls had to go to their Art History field trip and Abbey and I went to Musée Carnavalet to explore for a couple hours. Musée Carnavalet is a museum of the history of Paris so Abbey and I wandered the floors looked at the artwork and recreated rooms and tried to catch tidbits of the guided tours a bunch of elementary school aged children were getting. It was definitely more closely aligned to my interest level in the artifacts and history, but oh well. I was quite impressed with how interested the kids seemed about the stuff they were learning, how much they new about historical dates and events all ready and how eager they were to ask and answer questions. I was also surprised and how much the adults seemed to shut them down and not let them… in the U.S. I feel the teachers are always begging the kids to be more interested and engaged.

Abbey and I had decided to meet Nick, Brad and Erik at the Orangerie (a museum in the Tuilleries Gardens) after Nick got done with his second field trip at 4pm. So once we were all finally there we did the downstairs collections first, impressionist and perhaps also post impressionist paintings, there were a couple of Renoirs I really liked and the rest was interesting to see, but not all that excited. Afterwards we went upstairs to see the Nymphéas, a series of 8 huge paintings by Monet depicting the lily ponds at different times of days. The were displayed in two different oval rooms so that they surrounded you from all sides, almost in a continuous manner, when you were in the middle. They were very large (think wide-screen) and impressive to see, but I preferred the slightly smaller Nyphéas at the Musée Marmottan I saw a couple of weeks ago, I felt like these were almost too big.

By the time we got done looking at the Nymphéas, we were all tired, cultured-out and didn’t feel like returning to our respective apartments to make ourselves dinner. We decided that since most of us had yet to try McDonald’s, or McDo as they call it here, and we had been told that it was tastier here than in the U.S. we would give it a shot. We walked up the Champs-Elysée past an amusing and quite popular Christmas market and past numerous brand-name stores until we finally reached the McDo at the top of the Champs-Elysée. It was huge and even had a separate café part. I ordered a BigMac without cheese and had to wait around for a good 5 minutes for them to make it. While waiting a family, who I believe was Russian, came up after me to order. The mother started talking in English to the girl behind the counter (who was Asian), the dialogue was rather amusing since English was obviously everyone’s second or third language. The daughter chimed in to help her mother order and was doing just fine until she requested her ice tea “without yellow.” The girl behind the counter gave her a strange look and pondered before replying, “No ice?” “Yes, no ice!” replied the girl. Her mother and brother turned and looked at her and started mocking her for asking for no yellow. She then tried to explain that she had been thinking of something that sounded to me like “yerro.” I assumed that it was how you said ice in Russian but when I got upstairs and recounted the story to the rest of the group, I was informed that the way you say ice in Spanish is similar to that, so I decided that must have been what she was thinking of and simply got confused between her English and her Spanish – oh the difficulties of being at least tri-lingual… We ended up sitting, eating and chatting at McDo for an hour and a half – definitely something that doesn’t happen in the U.S., but I didn’t find the food to taste much better than McDonald’s in the U.S. although I can’t remember the last time I ate a McDonald’s hamburger anyway. It was an experience nonetheless, and afterwards we all headed home.

Saturday afternoon and this morning (Sunday), I spent cooking in preparation for our Thanksgiving lunch. It was an experience in its own right considering that my host-mom’s kitchen is not well equipped at all in my standards. She has no kitchen knives, spatulas, mixing spoons or whisks. I also had to convert all of my American recipes into metric measurements. I made chicken, stuffing, mashed sweet potatoes, green beans, cranberry sauce, gravy, dinner rolls and pumpkin pie for dessert. My host-mom was rather concerned by the amount and variety of herbs I wanted to put on the chicken and wouldn’t let me put them all and kept freaking out when I put more rosemary on it. For lunch it was my host-mom, her friend who is originally from Luxembourg, my friend from UPS Abbey and me. We had Kir and toasted nuts for aperitifs before the meal and my host-mom added in a green salad in between the main courses and dessert in order to not completely scare of her friend accustomed to French meals. Her friend was quite horrified that in America we don’t have a cheese course after the main course and seemed rather weary of sweet potatoes and pumpkin. Apparently the French aren’t accustomed to mixing sweet and salty tastes during the meal. In the end I think everything turned out decently well. My host-mom’s friend was impressed that I had made the dinner rolls from scratch. The stuffing was a little different because I made my own bread cubes instead of buying the pre-toasted ones like I do in the U.S. My host mother and her friend declared that the piecrust wasn’t good, but Abbey and I figured it just needed to be cooked slightly longer (the French are accustomed to a very cooked crust on their tarts). We now have lots of leftovers and I’m looking forward to getting to eat them the rest of the week. I wonder how much I could scare the French by my post-Thanksgiving sandwich with everything piled on top each other??

Photos (finally!):

Versailles (previous post)

2nd Floor of the Louvre (previous post)

Art Deco and Monet

Joyeux Thanksgiving!!!

Well I have certainly neglected to update recently. So, last weekend, here we go…

Friday was the IES trip to Versailles. Versailles was home to the French monarchy from Louis XIV until the French revolution in 1789. For American’s it is most widely recognized as the home of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. The gardens are immense and include the Hamlet Marie-Antoinette had built so she could go and pretend she was a shepherdess and heard sheep (which, according to legend, were pink and perfumed). We started off taking a tour of some of the areas that the general public isn’t allowed to tour, or at least wasn’t allowed to see that day (unfortunately we did not get to see the opera because we were late getting there). Our tour-guide was rather snobby, kept treating us like we were uneducated Americans and kept implying that we didn’t have a high enough understanding of French for him to do the tour in French, even though we understood just about everything he said except for the name of the illness one of the kings died from (small-pox – if you are curious). We were all quite happy when the tour was over and we spent the next hour walking around the rest of the chateaux on our own (without feeling belittled) before lunch. There is currently a modern art display happening at Versailles. It is all the work of an artist by the name of Jeff Koons. It is quite strange to be walking through all of these Rococo rooms and then all of a sudden come across a “piece of art” made of Vacuums or a large metal heart. I did not find the contrast appealing and felt that there are more appropriate places to display modern art, but I’m sure there are others who would disagree and say that the contrast was the whole point of the display.

Lunch was at one of the restaurants in the gardens so we got to see some of them as we walked down to the restaurant. Due to the weather being cold and windy, and that I’d already been to Versailles in the spring two years ago I did not feel like spending the hour and half we had left after lunch outside exploring the gardens. Instead I headed back to the castle and explored the gift shops and then just sat in one of the rooms enjoying the decoration until it was time to meet up at the bus.

Saturday was a day of recuperation from the week and was also spent getting a little bit of homework done. Sunday I headed to the Louvre in order to tackler the rest of the 2nd floor. This half of the floor didn’t interest me as much as the paintings on the other side, but none the less I got to see some interesting “objets d’art” including lots of Sevres porcelain which I now feel like I can recognize from a distance – at least the most common design. By far the highlight of the trip was getting to see Napoleon’s apartments, although I might have appreciated them a little more had it not been the same weekend as Versailles. The rooms were all grandiose, ornate and huge, especially the living and dining rooms!!! Hopefully the pictures will speak for themselves.

This week has been classes and another trip back to the American grocery store for more pumpkin and gravy mix. Tonight IES has coordinated a Thanksgiving dinner for the students, so that should be an interesting experience. I’m interested to see what the French catering company makes for a Thanksgiving meal (or more so, how it tastes!).

A Short Note...

I think I've been here too long. The other day on the metro there was this girl sitting across from me who I kept finding myself thinking was quite weird but I couldn't figure out why she gave me this impression. All of a sudden I realized what it was, she was smiling! I couldn't believe that I now thought smiling people were weird, but apparently I do... what's going to happen to me when I get back to the States and people who I don't even know say hello to me? I'm going to think the whole country is insane!

Other than this, it's been a fairly quiet week so far. I've been working on finalizing the menu for the Thanksgiving Dinner I'm cooking on the 30th for my host mother, two of her friends and my friend Abbey. Tomorrow I'm returning to the American grocery store to purchase Libby's canned pumpkin and perhaps another goodie or two for personal enjoyment (mmmm peanut butter M&M's!) Well I'm off to Versailles on Friday and who knows what Saturday and Sunday... I'll try to write Sunday night!

Americana and Castles

Another packed weekend in Paris! After classes Thursday Abbey, Brad and I headed out in search of an American grocery store called “Thanksgiving” that I’d heard about. I’m cooking Thanksgiving dinner for my host mom, a couple of her friends and Abbey the Sunday after Thanksgiving so I wanted to see what type of ingredients this store had incase I couldn’t find something in the French grocery stores. The store was very small, but incredible! I didn’t realize how nice it is to have familiar brands and labels looking back at you on the grocery store shelves… there was Kraft mac and cheese, Fluff, and three different brands of peanut butter. They also had all the basics you need for Thanksgiving: stove top stuffing, ocean spray cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie spices and even pans for your turkey and basters! I loved just standing at the window looking in. I decided not to purchase anything unless a substitute really couldn’t be found in a French grocery store since the prices were kind of outrageous (4.80 euro for a can of cranberry sauce!). Since we were already in the area, I wanted to head over to the falafel place and get an early dinner since it was one of the nights my host mom doesn’t cook for me. On our way, we walked by a Boulangerie/ Patisserie (bread and pastries store), which Abbey said had the best pastries so we were, of course, obligated to go in and make a purchase. I decided to buy a beignet (French for doughnut) since I had yet to try one here and remembered my days of making beignets with my grandma when I was younger. Here they are round like American doughnuts, but without a whole in the center. I ordered one and the lady turned to me and was like “chocolat?” – I had no idea that there was anything in them, but I decided what the heck and said sure. It was THE MOST DELICIOUS THING EVER! I was practically dying outside the store as I took my first bite. I made Abbey take a taste and she definitely felt the same way, it was heaven. So I quite contentedly ate my doughnut, which had been sliced in half and had a layer of chocolate in the middle, as we walked over to the falafel place. Falafel was delicious as always and we did some window-shopping as we ate before heading back to the metro to go home.

Friday, I got up early because I was taking my first field trip with IES and had to meet the bus at 8:30am. We were supposed to go to Fontainebleau and Vaux-le-Victomte, but Vaux-le-Vicomte was already closed for the winter or something like that so we ended up going to Fontainebleau and an artisan village called Barbizon, which was an area where painters of impressionism and realism gathered and painted in the forest back in the day. It was a really cloudy and foggy day and as we left the city I turned around to look back and couldn’t tell for the life of me that we’d just left Paris. It took us about an hour to get to Fontainebleau where it was equally cloudy and cold. We split up into two groups and my group got this really nice tour guide lady who gave us a tour (in French) and stopped often to make sure we were understanding what she was saying or to make a joke about something she said. Many of the kings and both emperors of France used the castle when they had the itch to go hunting. It was originally built for François I, but all of the kings after that made additions and/or changes within the castle. Pope Pius VII was also kidnapped and kept there for like a year and a half after he had come to Paris for Napoleon’s coronation (by kidnapped they meant that he wasn’t allowed to leave the grounds, he could however walk around the gardens, receive visitors, and his living space – including multiple receiving rooms and a large bedroom – was probably as big as my house!).

After Fontainebleau we went to lunch at a nearby restaurant. The dessert was très tasty! We had profiteroles, which are puff pastries cut in half with a scoop of vanilla ice cream in the middle and then homemade chocolate sauce on top, delicious! (and pretty too) Feeling sufficiently full and tired, we got back on the bus and drove the 20 or so minutes to Barbizon. There we took a tour of an old inn that used to house artists. They had painted all over everything there, the walls, the furniture and apparently even the dog! It was cool to get so see what was left of their wall and furniture paintings and upstairs they had a mini display of some of their canvas works as well. After that we walked down the main street for a while and our tour guide pointed out some of the more notable artists’ residences. After that it was back on the bus and back to Paris… it was nice to be back – the countryside felt too quiet.

Yesterday (Saturday), Abbey and I decided to do two of the walking tours out of my guidebook. We started off with the Ile St. Louis tour that took us by pretty bridges and parks, a large house now owned by the Rothschild family, many cute little boutiques and Berthillon ice cream (again). We stopped in Berthillon (the actually parlor and not another restaurant selling Berthillon) since Abbey had yet to try it, she got tiramisu and I tried some sort of semi-dried plum and liqueur ice cream and raspberry rose. The plum was good and the raspberry rose was out of this world!!! It was such an interesting combination of raspberry and rose flavors, but they were simply amazing together and made a very pretty red color. After Ile St. Louis we walked over to the Bastille area to do the second walking tour. We started at the Canal St. Martin (where I tried roasted chestnuts for the first time – interesting, but not sure I’d get them again), headed up to the Bastille, walked around the “Place” a little and then took some side streets down and around (they had an interesting assortment of restaurants and cute boutiques – definitely want to go back). We finished off by walking along this raised walkway (about 2 stories up) that was lined with tree and other plants. It was really cool and I would have never known it was there. It used to be railroad tracks, but now they converted it into this path that takes you from close to the Bastille all the way to the Bois du Vincennes on the outskirts of Paris. We didn’t follow it all the way because by this time we were both feeling the effects of walking for 3 hours straight and figured it was time to head home.

Today was a relaxing day… I took my time getting ready this morning and then headed out in time to meet up with my friends for lunch. Originally, we wanted to go to some place Shaina knows about that serves bagels, but apparently it’s closed on Sundays so we went to a restaurant called “Breakfast in America.” Our hostess was of Asian descent and spoke with an Australian accent, something I found rather amusing given she was working at a place trying to imitate the U.S. in Paris. The food was delicious and I think everyone had a great time. We spent an hour waiting in line to get into the restaurant and most of that time was passed by discussing every item on the menu and how much we liked/ missed/ wanted that particular food or commenting on how they explained certain item in French (ex. Cream cheese was described as cheese Philadelphia style and salsa as Mexican sauce). I got a bagel and cream cheese and a pancake on the side. It was a rather carb heavy lunch, but quite enjoyable and made us all feel back at home. After we all cleaned our plates thoroughly and paid the bill we headed our separate ways as everyone else had homework they needed to do. I was actually good this weekend and got my homework done ahead of time!!

Fontainebleau pictures here.

Walking tour pictures here.

Walking, Walking, Everywhere!

Well the election is over and perhaps I will now not be bombarded with the question of who I’m voting for every time someone finds out I’m American. A lot of kids from my program went out to American bars and such last night, staying up to watch the election results as they came in. I decided I preferred sleep and set an alarm for 4am so I could check out what was going on then. Abbey also called me at 5am after they had officially called the election for Obama to let me know.

This past weekend was Fall Break! I spent most of Friday, Saturday and Sunday procrastinating from writing and then eventually writing a 5 page single spaced paper as part of an application for a summer internship… Monday I went to the Louvre in the morning and walked around half of the second floor looking at French and Italian paintings from the 15th – 18th centuries I believe. I saw a couple of famous pieces I had studied in my art history class last year, which was pretty cool. I saw the Mona Lisa from a distance as I negotiated the crowds around it to get to the next room. I really find it unimpressive and not worth being jostled around my impatient tourists all using their cameras’ flashes when all the signs specifically say you can’t! I’m really unimpressed with the Louvre as far as their artistic esthetic goes… they seem to spend very little time organizing paintings so that you can fully appreciate them, often putting them one on top of another two or three high in small rooms where you can’t get far enough away from the wall to see the higher painting. I feel they are much more interested in the quantity of items collected!

Monday evening I finished up my essay and felt quite relieved to have it behind me. Tuesday my friend Emily, who was here the weekend before, was back in town, just for the day. She and 3 other friends went to Italy for fall break and their plane arrived in Paris at 8am and their train back to Nantes wasn’t until 9pm. I met up with Emily and one of the other girls (the other two went to the Musée d’Orsay for the day) and we set off for what became a day of walking. We started off at Monoprix where they bought breakfast and I went next door to get a Starbucks. Ok, I know I said my last Starbucks was going to be my only one while I was her, but they just came out with the holiday drinks here, which are completely different from the holiday drinks in the U.S. so I was just dying to try one! Here they have three holiday drinks, Morello Cherry Mocha, Crème Brulée Latte and Praline Mocha. I got a Crème Brulée Latte which tasted kind of like a mix between a Cinnamon dolce Latte and an Eggnog Latte, pretty yummy, but not obviously Crème Brulée. After having gotten our food we headed to the near by Luxembourg Gardens to sit, eat and enjoy the surprisingly clear and sunny weather. It was November 11th and thus a “Jour ferié” or holiday that everyone has off work and school for so the park was fully of families and couples. Children were sailing mini boats in the fountain and runners were making their rounds around the perimeter of the park. After a while there, we decided to do a bit of wandering, first in the direction of the Panthéon (which you have to pay for to get in, so we admired the exterior), then another church, which a random guy told us was the most beautiful in Paris, but it didn’t open until 2pm. We ended up on boulevard St. Germain, which is known for it shops and is home to two famous cafés: Café Flore and Les Deux Maggots. We walked along for a while and would stop and look at all the shoe stores as we are all in search for cute French boots at a reasonable price. We stopped at a Fragonard boutique (brand of French perfume) and smelled, sprayed and tested many scents until our scent cells were dead. We continued down the street until we hit the Seine and decided to cross to the other side and start thinking about lunch. We walked along the Rue du Rivoli and decided to go to the Louvre for lunch and eat gallettes (like crepes, but with buckwheat instead of normal flour). Emily had also decided at this point, after having pleanty of time to spell the top, heart and bottom notes of the perfurme, that she wanted to purchase one of the Fragonard scents so we went to the Fragonard boutique at the Louvre so she could do so.

After that we decided to go search out the famous ice cream parlor Berthillon on the Ile St. Louis. It was a little bit longer of a walk from the Louvre to the island than I had originally anticipated, but we got to admire more of Paris and I used my newfound knowledge from my architecture class to interject random facts about places as we walked by. It was my first time on the Ile St. Louis and I’m definitely planning on heading back, everything is cute and tiny and there were pedestrians (albeit mostly tourists) everywhere! The ice cream parlor was closed, but there were a number of other little restaurants along the same street that sold their ice cream so we shelled out the money for the rather pricey deliciousness and headed to the park behind Notre Dame to enjoy the frozen delicacy. I got caramel made with salted butter, white chocolate and praline/ pine nut. I enjoyed the caramel and the praline/ pine nut immensely, but the white chocolate had a very strange texture that we decided was cornstarch and was less than impressed. Ice cream finished, sun starting to set and wind picking up we were all quite cold and decided to take a walk around the interior of Notre Dame to warm up. After that, we headed back across the Seine the meandered aimlessly down streets in the general direction of Montparnasse. At 6:30 we met up with the other two girls at the Montparnass train station and headed to dinner. I only had a hot chocolate since I was scheduled to eat with my host mom that evening and a little after 7 I said my Adieu’s and headed back home on the metro.

Today and tomorrow it’s back to classes and Friday I’m going on a field trip to Fontainbleau (a chateau) with IES. I have recently discovered reruns of old episodes of Gilmore Girls and JAG on French TV, which I find highly amusing. Sadly, at the moment it’s time to get back to the the homework done I ignored over the weekend! Pictures to come later…